Kidney sticks to his guns

The British

& Irish Lions

Tour to New Zealand 2017

Kidney sticks to his guns

Ireland coach Declan Kidney has named an unchanged line-up for Saturday's RBS 6 Nations clash against Wales at the Millennium Stadium.

The game represents a major milestone for two-time Lions tourist David Wallace who wins his 70th international cap.

The openside flanker has played eight times for the Lions and has touched down once. He is one of ten Lions in the Irish starting XV.

Elsewhere three- tour Lions veteran hangs on to the No10 jersey while Eoin Reddan retains his place despite the return to fitness of Tomas O'Leary.

Two-times Lions tourist Donncha O'Callaghan insists Ireland's discipline must improve if they are to keep alive their Triple Crown hopes with a victory over Wales.

The second-row revealed Declan Kidney laid into his troops during a meeting following Ireland's narrow win over Scotland where they continually fell foul of the law.

"Whoever was in on our meeting with Declan wouldn't want to be on the end of a silly penalty this weekend," said O'Callaghan.

"Everyone knows Declan as really calm and composed, but he let fly."

"It has been a while since he lost his temper. I can remember one or two with Munster, but it's fair to say he was fairly annoyed.

"We know him so it's tough for him to be that blunt and direct. It's a side to him that you don't like to see too much.

"You can say you should self-police within the team and Paul O'Connell and Brian O'Driscoll were saying that, but none of it would carry the weight like when it came from Declan at the meeting.

"You could see it's the main man calling the shots and guys don't want to re-offend.

"There's a balance to strike because you don't want to be playing with 15 altar boys. There are certain balls you have to contest, and there are certain penalties we're going to give away.

"But it's getting the balance right between the crazy, stupid ones that just cost your team. We gave away 12 penalties and they say in international rugby you tend to give away eight, so exactly, we had four stupid penalties and you can control those ones.

"It's just the ones that you can control that are the massive problem and it spreads across everything, really, error rate and stuff like that."